Mensch on the High Bench

Eytan Kobre

Born a Catholic but now a prominent member of the frum community in Portland, Oregon, Judge Rick Haselton has spent a lifetime climbing legal and spiritual ladders

Tuesday, August 07, 2018

“This is where I want to be; this is where I was meant to be… [This] is the life I want. A life of teshuvah, tefillah, and tzedakah. A life of observing the mitzvot more rigorously. A life of listening and studying and understanding better. A life as a full member of my community who can undertake all the mitzvot. A life as a Jew” (Photos: One Click Studio, personal archives)

J

udge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination will no doubt draw attention once again to the high court’s religious makeup. If he’s confirmed, Kavanaugh would become the nine-member court’s sixth Catholic, alongside three Jews — notable for a predominantly Protestant country.

The only thing more eclectic would be the nomination of someone who’s spent time in both religious categories — someone like Rick Haselton. Formerly chief judge of the Oregon Court of Appeals, Haselton began life as a Catholic, but is now a prominent member of Portland’s growing frum community. He retired from the bench in 2015, so he’s not in the running for a seat — except, perhaps, at Portland’s rapidly growing Congregation Kesser Israel, which is now so packed it’s hard to find a place to sit on Shabbos morning.

But were he to join the high court, Haselton would find one familiar face: his former Yale Law School classmate Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The two were good friends, and from similar backgrounds, both having been raised in modest circumstances by hardworking single mothers. They studied for exams together and partnered for trial court practice, but sharply parted ways on baseball, with Haselton rooting for the Boston Red Sox and South Bronx native Sotomayor a diehard Yankees fan.

Rick was born and raised in Albany, Oregon, a farming and mill town 70 miles south of Portland with a population then of 6,000 (it’s now eight times that size). He and his older sister Diane shared an idyllic childhood in the all-American town, a place where kids roamed free on their bikes and summers were spent picking berries and beans. They had a devoutly Catholic upbringing, with Rick even serving as an altar boy. Their grandmother fervently wished that Rick would enter the priesthood, but he was deterred by his interest in eventually marrying — and one other minor disqualification.

“I had a deep core belief in G-d, but the part about the religion’s founder never made any sense to me,” he recalls.

Within his first few hours at Stanford, Haselton met Jeff Druckman and Erica Goldman, who were to become his lifelong friends and, ultimately, the catalysts for both his embrace of Yiddishkeit and his marriage

There were only a few Jewish families in Albany and Judaism wasn’t remotely on his radar, yet Rick remembers a few minor but consequential episodes that stuck with him. “For example, when Dodgers pitching ace Sandy Koufax didn’t play on Yom Kippur, I took note, and it kind of hooked me. I was a voracious reader during high school, and for some reason I chose to read contemporary historical novels about Israel, which affected me. And during the Six Day War, a Portland radio station gave updates every half hour, which it introduced by playing ‘Hava Nagilah.’ So there I was, a Catholic kid sitting in rural Oregon, listening to what I recognized as Israeli music.”

He would find more fateful connections when after high school he went off to prestigious Stanford University: Within his first few hours there he met Jeff Druckman and Erica Goldman, who were to become his lifelong friends and, ultimately, the catalysts for both his embrace of Yiddishkeit and his marriage. In his freshman year he enrolled in an Introduction to Judaism course, and found himself the only non-Jewish student attending. After earning his bachelor’s in political science, Rick applied to Oregon’s three law schools and, on a whim, to Harvard and Yale too.(Excerpted from Mishpacha, Issue 722)